Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Isaiah 54:11-14

Brothers and sisters, we just sang, “Thy word, my trusty sword.” Unfortunately, we live in a time where in the church of Jesus Christ, his word is a rusty sword more often than a trusty sword. We attend to that word now. We turn to his scriptures and look for truth, look for instruction, look for vision and a dream by which we may live. Isaiah 54:11-14 is the sermon text. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Oh you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for the beauty of your word. We thank you for the beauty of our lives and this created order in which we live. We thank you for this vision of beauty for our city. And we pray Lord God you would use this word to transform us, to change us, that we might be more beautiful in the way we interact with other people, in the work of our hands, and in the thoughts we put our minds to as well.

Help us Lord God to see the applicability of this word to us personally and culturally and in society as well. Bless this word, Father, to us by your Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

One of the big summer movies that came out a couple of weeks ago is a movie called Inception. And it can be seen from a lot of perspectives. Inception—and this is not a spoiler, it’s been well advertised—is about dreams. Extraction is breaking into somebody else’s dreams and taking out ideas or secrets that they won’t reveal to you when they’re awake. Inception, on the other hand, is breaking into someone’s dreams and in that dream, changing their dream so that you implant an idea that will transform them and change them when they wake up from the dream and do things that they’re not sure why they’re doing it, but you’ve planted the idea.

And from one perspective, one of the many reviews that have been written about it, looks at it from an analogy of movie making. It’s interesting—the team that DiCaprio puts together for this inception is really very much like the sort of team you’d put together for a movie. There’s an actor and a producer who scouts out locations, and there’s a director. If you look at the different people in his group, it seems like it fits very well with a movie-making scheme. And at one level, perhaps the movie is about movies. Positively or negatively, movies have a tremendous power.

We enter into a state of unreality as we watch a movie. We see somebody’s dream. It’s always a dream. It’s not real. And the purpose of the movie maker, if he knows what he’s doing, is to change you as a result of the movie. And maybe in a way that you’re not even conscious of being changed, but you walk out different. And so, in a way, it’s sort of like the opposite end, the bookend of Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s movie from last year, where Tarantino had a movie that looked at the power of movies broadly speaking in a culture—looking at movie making of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the result it had on creating evil in the world—and on the other hand, using cinema in that movie to destroy evil in a country or nation as well. He uses cinema, it’s an analogy, but still he uses it to crush the Nazis.

And so dreams, movies, visions have this tremendous ability to change who we are individually, as in Inception, or culturally, as in Inglourious Basterds. And this is what movies attempt to do. This is what dreams can be seen as doing—one thing that’s happening in them. The Lord God gives us dreams. Why? Well, I don’t know, but perhaps there is some inception going on in the context of our dreams. We wake up changed somehow as a result of what he sovereignly has brought to pass in the context of our dreams.

And I want to relate this to my sermon two weeks ago on Micah 6:8 and the sermon this week on Isaiah 54. The preaching of the word is not unreality, but it is a vision. Isaiah says in terms of our text today that it’s the vision of Isaiah. That’s what his book is. It’s kind of like a dream. He gives us a vision in this particular text. He gives us a vision or a dream for the city, and he wants us—you know, to have inception happen—and he wants us to go away from here with, you know, self-consciously, I’m sure, but with a changed perspective a little bit. That’s what preaching of the word is always about. God transforms us. And so he wants us to have a vision, a dream for the city that will change who we are in relationship to it.

You know, we hear a lot these days about citywide transformation by churches and stuff. What does it mean? In Micah 6:8, it’s followed by Micah 6:9 where God cries to the city. But what do we cry? That’s the question. What does it mean? And frequently, if you haven’t thought through God’s vision for what we do in terms of city transformation, what we’re going to do is get involved in a city as what I refer to as “me too” evangelicals.

Oh, you’re doing this? Yeah, us too. We can do that, too. Oh, we like you. Yeah. Oh, you’re doing recreation, you’re doing closing off the streets? Yeah, we like that. Me, too. You’re doing green? Yeah, me too. Sustainability? Yeah, me too. So we haven’t thought through necessarily what God is doing in these areas with a consistently biblical theme.

It’s interesting to me that, and I’m not, you know, I don’t know what happened, but what I do know is that evangelicals gave Sam Adams, who is a homosexual who had a relationship with a teenage boy and lied about it, etc., mayor of Portland. Evangelicals gave him $25,000 on behalf of evangelicals to the city, that is through him. That’s good—you know, trying to bless the city in some way. But I couldn’t help but think this last week of what John the Baptist did. John the Baptist spoke truth to power. And what he said was, “You’re involved in an illicit sexual relationship.” The end result was John the Baptist got his head cut off.

Now, that’s a different take on what it means to transform a city. So there are times that we need to bless the city, and as Rich Bledsoe has recently written, he thinks it’s time he has to figure out how to curse the city because we don’t want to simply reinforce everything they’re doing.

So what do we cry? This is a list today. It’s a short list, but like Micah 6:8 had a list for us personally, right? To look at our week: Did you do justice? Did you love mercy? Did you walk humbly with God this last week? So Isaiah 54 gives us a list as well.

I looked at this text. It’s interesting how God presented this to me. I watched a first lesson of a DVD series of Sunday school lessons by Tim Keller—Gospel and Life, I think it’s called. And the first lesson was on cities and city transformation and the purpose of cities. And he didn’t get into any kind of exegetical study, but he said God gives us cities, you know, for three reasons or four reasons. First, they’re to be places of safety. Secondly, they’re to be places of legal or judicial development. Laws originate from cities. Third, they’re to be places of beauty and culture. And fourth, they’re places where spiritual quests are going on.

And so I had that in the back of my head, and I thought, well, that’s kind of a nice summation. That’s a nice list in terms of transforming cities. And this verse that we just read—well, we read it in a little broader context—but it seems to speak directly of these things. It talks about high places, pinnacles, spiritual quest, transcendence of God, humility before God. It talks about gates. The gates were the place where the courts were held—justice, the elders sat in the gates, legal development. It talks about walls. Walls are places of defense and security. And it talks about all three of them in a way where they’re beautiful. They’re described in various elements which we’ll talk about as we get into the text a little more. But there’s beauty in all of these things, cultural development in terms of beauty.

Now, what Isaiah does frequently throughout his vision is he contrasts the city that God is building. The verse starts with “I will lay,” right? So God does this building. This is the sort of building he builds. And that’s contrasted with the sort of city Jerusalem has become and its culture in Judah in general—the city of man apart from God. And in Micah 6:8, as I said two weeks ago, it’s a covenant lawsuit. And God, after Micah 6:8, he cries to the city and he brings specifications of what they haven’t been doing in terms of justice and mercy. And it has to do with false weights and short measures and all that sort of stuff—and wickedness and trade and commerce. And he specifically addresses the city that’s become corrupt, in a place of violence and wickedness.

So you can either have Christian influence in cities and you have great laws, cool culture, nice safe places for people to live in, and a spiritual quest for the God of the scriptures, or when Christians left the cities, what happened? Well, the spiritual quest became something other than for God. The laws become perverted. They’re not—they’re now the least safe places to live in instead of supposedly the most safe places, which cities were supposed to be. And the kind of culture that emanates from this—you know, it’s all part of there’s common grace involved. You can only paint using the palette that God has given to us, but the culture becomes increasingly perverted and ugly. There’s a distinction.

So you know what God does here is he gives us a list, and this list sort of matches up with the list from Micah 6:8. It’s a way for us to strategize: what do we do in Oregon City? This is the city where God has planted us. And not just Oregon. I know many of you live other places in your city. This is the list I think that these verses give to us—a short list. There’s lots more that could be said, but this is a list that helps us to focus. So we want to look at this dream and we want to look at this dream, this vision of Isaiah in context.

Deutero—this term, and it sometimes throws you. What are they talking about? Deutero just means “second.” And so there’s this view that Isaiah has two parts to it: chapters 1-39 kind of like the Old Testament’s 39 books of the Old Testament, and chapters 40-66 much more gospel-oriented it seems. And so it seems to have a different style, a different kind of basic message going on. And it’s 27 books that seem to be kind of like the New Testament. So it’s sort of interesting—it’s a good way to think about Isaiah when you’re reading through it and where you’re at. And this is in Second Isaiah, chapter 54, obviously.

And another way to look at Isaiah is it’s there—there are seven sections on the second page of your outline, the handout, rather, today. There is a page that says “Isaiah Sunday School Class Final Exam.” And this was—we’ve been using this in the last month or so with the Isaiah class. And you can see at the top a two-part outline: Old Testament, New Testament. And then there’s also a three-part outline. Some people have talked about first, second, and third Isaiah. And again, there’s kind of a reason for that. As you move toward the last half, the second half of the book, the last third of the book maybe—not quite that many chapters—but it seems like it’s a different experience now. And it’s maybe to be compared to: you have the Old Testament, gospels and epistles that apply the gospel.

So the gospel, beginning at chapter 40:1: “Comfort my people. Comfort ye my people.” And the wonderful news about Jesus Christ and the coming Messiah and their restoration. That’s followed by difficult times toward the end of the book, but that’s because it’s working its way out both after they had come back from captivity—that is, the Jews from Babylon—and after Jesus Christ dies and is resurrected, there’s troubles. Book of Acts has them; epistles talk about the warfare that will go on. Not increasingly, but there will be increasing victory over time. But it kind of is a reflection and commentary on the gospels. And so Isaiah has that sort of structure, but it also has a seven-part structure. And on the outline today, on that second page, it’s got these seven parts.

And the sixth section, you know, is the section in which we’re at today in Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54 is a response to Isaiah 53. And in Isaiah 53, a lot of people—if you know your Bibles, if your Bibles are a trusty source, a sword, not a rusty sword to you—you might know that Isaiah 53 should be one of the more well-known passages, unless we kind of have a New Testament only mentality. And it’s all about the suffering servant. It’s about Jesus. All these descriptions of his suffering and making atonement for the sins of his people.

Now, it also ends with victory. As a result of his suffering, God sees it. He begins to exercise authority over the whole world. So Isaiah 53 is the gospel of the suffering servant who becomes victorious. And Isaiah 54 is a response to that. God created Adam on the sixth day, the man. And in this sixth section of Isaiah, the big focal point is the Lord Jesus Christ, the suffering servant to come, the new man who will usher in then the times of the New Testament and historical advance.

So our response to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flow of Isaiah is in this sixth-day section. And we as men serve that servant. And as a result, we’re supposed to do certain things. And one of the things we’re supposed to see and envision is God’s vision for the city and work toward that. Now, he’s doing it ultimately—he’s sovereign—but it’s, again, a list of things for us to consider as we look at our proper response to the new man, the new creation in Christ. What are we supposed to do? Well, we’re supposed to respond by, among other things, in Isaiah 54, by seeing what God has in store for our cities. For our cities specifically.

Now, on another level, the city in Isaiah 54 is a description of the church. When we sang our first song today, we talked about coming into the gates of Zion and how they’re beautiful and we have peace and prosperity there. And that’s a direct kind of connection, a very direct connection between that Psalm 24 and what we read in Isaiah 54. You know, the gates of the city are beautiful and we’re coming in. And so there’s a sense in which the idea of the city is the church—of course, a very important sense of that. But still, I think we can make application of it for our literal cities as well. And that’s what we want to do today.

So what we want to do then is consider this vision. We’ve looked at its context a little bit. It’s very important for us. It’s then the section of Isaiah that describes our response to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So this is very much applicable to us today in terms of our particular vision.

Well, what about the audience? Verse 11a. So this vision, this dream is given to a particular audience. Who are they? Well, they’re afflicted. Verse 11: “Oh you afflicted ones.” They’re tossed with tempest. They’re not comforted. So—hard times, right? He’s writing to people preparing them for the return from Babylonian captivity. But remember, it also has significance for this side of the gospel, this side of the coming of Christ. And there are certainly times when the church is afflicted, when the church is set upon. And when we as individuals feel this same way.

Afflicted seems to be this external difficulty that we’re having. Tossed—we have emotional distress. We’re sort of, you know, not sure which way to turn. We’re tossed with tempest. And specifically, I suppose we could say that in the last couple of weeks, the rulings of two judges have kind of created tempest in our lives. What is going on? We can’t enforce laws, and we’re going to have a protected minority of people that are engaged in sinful sexual acts. What is happening? And in spite of the people still generally having a correct perspective on this stuff, judges overturn the proper decisions of the people to enforce laws and to not grant marital status to people that are involved in sexual sin. We’re tossed with tempest. We’re afflicted, and many times we’re not comforted. We are at disease.

This is the audience. John Calvin said this: “This earnest address is exceedingly well fitted for soothing the grief of believers, for it represents the church which was ready to be drowned as being now rescued by him from shipwreck. Whenever therefore we shall see her violently shaken by tempest and weighed down by a load of distresses and deprived of all consolation, let us remember that these are the very circumstances which induce God to give assistance.”

So hard times—Isaiah 53 is about the suffering servant. We’re his people. We will suffer also. And so this text is meant to give comfort, to give hope to people in the midst of suffering. Now I know many of you—some of you at least—have big problems going on. But this vision is given to you to bring you comfort and to bring you hope in your lives individually and in the Christian church as well.

And what’s going to happen after the vision is given? It’ll conclude with being safe and secure in the context of that beautified city. So we move from troubles and afflictions and tempests and no hope to hope. And then we’re brought into a position of being comforted by God and protected by power.

Well, that’s the vision itself of hope—verses 11b and 12. So let’s take a little look at this first. I’ve given you kind of an overall quick glance at this section of the vision itself again on your handouts, on the first page. And yes, it’s got all those goofy indents, and I know some of you don’t like that. I do, and I print the outlines up. So, and that’s because God wants me to. So I think this is what God wants for you today, too.

What’s interesting about it is this particular section begins and ends with the same Hebrew word. The word is stone. And stone has as its root word “to build.” So the idea is you got building stones. And so this idea is that God is the architect of this city. And there’s a nice unit then that are marked off by the same Hebrew word. Now, when I see that kind of a thing, I can’t ignore it. I got to look at it and wow, that’s interesting. What’s in between here? And what’s in between here is an oscillation back and forth between statements of beauty of various types and elements of what God is building.

So, for instance, we begin with stones, and then they have their colorful gems. It’s not really right, but it’s a term of beauty—antimony probably. And then we go back to foundations. And then we go to sapphires, which is probably lapis lazuli. Go back to a building element, pinnacles, high points. And then we have another word of beauty, rubies. Back to a building element, gates. And another element of beauty, crystal, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes what it actually is. And then we go to “all your walls”—okay, so a building element—and then you would think “precious stones” is one, but it isn’t. “Precious” is again an ornamentation idea. And then we’re back to the same Hebrew word: stones.

So the idea is this section is all about God building with these stones. And he’s building particular things: foundations, a wall, a gate, high points, towers in this city. And each of these things are built in beauty. So that’s the overall picture of it: God has given us a beautiful city. And that’s what we’ll look at first.

The beautiful city begins in verse 11b. And so on your outlines, we’re at “A” now in the vision: “a beautiful city.” And what God says is, “Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems. Behold—God says, look at me.” Okay, so you’re afflicted, you’re not comforted, your tempest tossed, you have afflictions, and the first thing God says to you is “Behold, look at me. Look at the vision I’m putting before you.” And after he says “Behold, look at me,” he says “I am laying, I am building a city”—have hope. We’re not building it ultimately. God is. It’s the city of God in contrast to the city of man. God begins by wanting us to focus on him to receive hope and then to understand that he’s building the city. It’s not dependent upon us, ultimately, he’s doing it.

Now, we’re either part of the building project or we’re not part of the building. So we have a response to this. But the idea is it starts off with a strong statement of God’s sovereignty. And that’s what the basis for our hope is. There’s no hope if we think the world is just filled with everybody’s decisions apart from the overarching providence of God that’s doing things. So God says, “Look at me. I am laying your stones, your building stones.”

And then it says “with colored gems.” Well, this colored gem is actually mascara. What do I mean by that? Well, the word here is actually a word that means antimony, which was a black semi-metallic stuff that was used in making black pigment, for instance. And it was also used to make black eyeshadow, eyeliner. It was used to make mascara of the ancient world. Now it’s not used anymore that way because, being having metallic elements, it’s poisonous. So it wasn’t particularly good for your eyes, as it turned out. But that’s the way it was used. And the Bible talks about its use in this particular way, for instance, in Job 42, at the very end of the book of Job.

We have Job’s daughters, right? Again, if it’s a rusty sword, we don’t know what Job’s daughters is talking about. But that’s the beautiful end. And there was even a group, a women’s organization named after Job’s daughters. Well, in Job 42, he tells us he had seven sons and three daughters. This means daughters are worth—uh, are twice as good as boys. It only takes three of them to balance off the seven sons. Well, a couple people are still awake. That’s good. Okay, daughters. And it tells us the names of these daughters. And the name of the third daughter is given to us: Karen Hapuj, which means “horn of antimony”—powerful horn of this mascara stuff. And the idea is that commentators think this daughter had particularly beautiful eyes. And so this was one of the reasons her name was like that. She had dark lashes. But you know, when you put eyeliner on, your eyes look big, and she had big beautiful eyes. And indeed, it goes on to say: “In the land there were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job.”

So there you have it. In Jeremiah 4:30 this same thing is talked about: “Though you enlarge your eyes with paint.” And that’s the same kind of substance—this paint that contains antimony, black, a black setting. So what’s he telling us? Well, the very foundation is going to have beautiful stones in it, but even the setting for the stones is beautiful. This is talking about the mortar. This is talking about the mortar that’s colored with black—is the idea. So you’re going to have these beautiful gemstones in this building, but they’re actually set in the context of something dark and striking to bring out the beauty of the gemstones and the other things that he builds in. So that’s kind of the beginning of this. The whole building, all essentially, is set. It’s not just going to be built with beautiful things. The very setting of these stones is beautiful. And so this is what it means by “colored gems.” It actually means kind of a mascara deal. And so it’s beautiful by being set off in that particular way.

But then he goes on to say that he’s going to lay their foundations with sapphires. Well, again here, this is probably not the modern sapphire. You know, we’re dealing with Hebrew words that are old, and it’s hard to translate them correctly. And I think there’s a progression of getting better at it. But this word probably refers to—almost certainly refers to—lapis lazuli, which is a beautiful blue semi-precious stone. And so the foundations of the city are set in beauty as well.

This lapis lazuli is talked about a lot in the Bible. It’s very costly, according to Job 28. It’s desirable, according to Ezekiel 28. It is one of the stones—and this is important—on the breastplate of the high priest. So the high priest had a breastplate, and there were 12 gemstones of fire on his breastplate. And this lapis lazuli, this blue semi-precious gem, was one of those stones. And so it relates the city to the breastplate of the high priest.

So you know, one way to think about this is that the high priest represents God, right? And the stones—and the two stones on the shoulders—are actually the names of the tribes. But the stones represent people, and the people are close to God’s heart. They’re close to him. And God keeps his people. After he gets done with the description of these stones, he’s going to talk about how their children are being taught by the Lord. So in a way, this is the first kind of emblem to us that what’s really going on here certainly can have reference to physical beauty and actual semi-precious stones. But these are emblematic of the people that comprise the city.

And this word is like that—this same lapis lazuli blue color is used in the Song of Songs. The wife describes her beautiful husband as having an abdomen of lapis lazuli. He’s so beautiful. He’s got he’s blue. Maybe that’s where James Cameron got the idea for his blue people. I don’t know. But what’s going on, of course, is the bridegroom has the same color that’s associated with the gemstones of the high priest and are emblematic of God’s beauty and God’s glory. And her husband is like that. So that’s the idea.

Even in Lamentations 4, the Nazarites are referred to in the same way. Well, in any event, so that’s the two kind of beginning points. And then we have the specific things that are talked about here. And the first is “pinnacles of rubies.” Now the word pinnacle actually literally is “sons.” But the way this word was used in the Hebrew of the day was to represent architectural elements, battlements, turrets, towers that would catch the reflection of the sun, right? And so the towers of the city catch the reflection of the sun. And so they’re referred to as “suns.”

And this word for ruby is probably a jasper stone. Again, it’s mentioned several times in the scriptures. It’s a beautiful stone. And so it has that idea to it.

Now, we talk about the beginning of this plan for the city, right? A city is a place of spiritual quest. And the spiritual quest, as described in this verse, the high place is the reflection of the sun. And it is beautiful in reflecting the sun. These gemstones that are described in the Bible are called in Ezekiel “stones of fire” because they reflect the sun. If you look at your diamond, ladies—I’m told, I’ve never done this, but I’m told you look at it in the light, you’ll see fire inside that stone. And these gemstones were like that. They were beautiful because they reflected the fire, the glory of God. And really and essentially, also captures the sun in the context of this stone.

And so you have the high place here as a reflection of the glory of the great son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Father and the Spirit. And a beautiful context for that—with this particular kind of jasper, this red—as a result, which kind of burns. Like the idea is that this word comes from a word that means to burn like fire. So you’ve got these beautiful things.

Now, this is the establishment. This is the high place. You know, in Greek, the Greek counterfeit of Christianity, there was an agora, a high place, a temple, and then there’d be the acropolis, the city that comes down from the agora. And in the Old Testament, it’s the same way. There were the high places where God was worshiped by the patriarchs, and the cities would kind of form around them. And you know, in Jerusalem, you’ve got a temple, kind of a high place, and the city forms around it. And the idea is that you know, your city has to begin with having the correct person and truth as the spiritual quest of the city.

When a city seeks a spiritual quest—which man always does because he’s made in God’s image—but rejects the reflection of God’s glory, then the high place reflects the glory of man. And in our culture, cities usually have their high places as humanism and statism. They’re worshiping man himself, his ability today to do what he’d like to do. And the state is worshiped because it’s the collective power and abilities of humanity. And so what we have primarily in the cities is the absence of religion in the public square in the city and the presence instead of governments.

I heard this morning that Portland now—the three largest employers in Portland are City of Portland and the county and the federal government. Something like that. Three governmental agencies are now the top three employers in Portland. That’s a reflection of the spiritual quest that’s going on in that particular city. It’s not seeking the reflected son of God as revealed in the scriptures, but rather it’s based in—basically, it’s a quest for humanity and humanism’s collective ability as expressed in the context of the civil state.

Now, the next description is “gates of crystal.” And again here, the crystal probably is better translated “carbuncle,” although that’s an old word too. And carbuncle today everybody thinks about an infection or an abscess or something, but a carbuncle was an old word for a semi-precious stone of great beauty, usually red. And it was a gemstone, of course. And in Exodus 28, the carbuncle again is listed as one of the elements of the breastplate of the high priest. And so the gates are of this beautiful gemstone of carbuncle or a red fiery stone again.

So gates—though gates are places of the administration of justice. Gates are where the elders would meet. Their judicial development and cultivation. You know, we want to be careful in reacting to our culture when it goes off in the wrong direction by galloping off in the other wrong direction. You know, there really is judicial development in the world. There has to be because with societal development, the fixed laws of God are reflected in man’s statutes when he’s doing right. These things have to be applied in new and different ways based on the societal context. So there has to be judicial development.

What you had in the Old Testament was you had the fixed law of God represented, I suppose, preeminently in the Ten Commandments. But then you had all these rulings of the elders in the gate. The basis for American law was the same thing. It was English common law. English common law was essentially a record of the rulings of elders ruling, judges ruling, applying the basic case law they’d received from throughout history as God’s law—essentially the Ten Commandments—but applying that in a particular setting in the city by coming together at the gate. So English common law is essentially this “elders in the gate” development of judicial jurisprudence. That’s a good thing.

So we don’t want to say, “Well, no, there shouldn’t be any jurisprudence. We don’t want legislators or we don’t want judges doing new things,” or they’re going to have to do some new things and apply the one law in new and different ways because of culture. And at those gates, again, what we talked about before is doing justice has to be defined by God’s word.

So one of the specific ways we look at Oregon City or at Portland is first of all, there should be a spiritual quest where we’re out there evangelizing, presenting the gospel, getting people on their spiritual quest to focus on the God of the scriptures. Secondly, we should be involved in the judicial actions, the law systems of our city—Oregon City, Portland, etc.—in a way that is distinctly Christian based on the word of God.

It’s been quite humorous this last week hearing people—conservatives—trying to come up with reasons why gay marriage shouldn’t happen without reference to the scriptures. It’s really quite something. There are some cases that can be made, secular cases, but you know, really God is just telling us here that you know, without a law system based on the scriptures and his law, you’re sort of lost at sea then in terms of jurisprudence.

What is the situation today? Well, the judicial ruling with homosexuality this last week—overturning the vote of the people. It wasn’t wrong because it overturned the vote of the people, right? I mean, the majority of the people say Christians should be stoned. We want a judge to protect us by saying that’s not a good law. God. So that ruling was not wrong because it overturned the will of the people. The will of the people is not the will of God necessarily.

Now, you know, I say that, but of course judges should only overturn what people are doing based on constitutional reasons. And I’m sure that his reasoning was poor. And it’s actually a reflection of injustice because what he did with that ruling was to bless what God says should be cursed. It was to call what’s darkness, light. Homosexuality, homosexual marriage is illicit sexual activity. It’d be like saying that adultery is now a constitutionally protected right, or you know, whatever it is, marrying a cow or something. No.

So what the judge did was not wrong in trying to protect a minority. It wasn’t wrong in overturning the role of the vote of the people. It was wrong because it violates God’s word and standard for sexual activity. That’s why it was wrong. It was a gate issue, okay? He was trying to build a wall around homosexual marriage, but his ruling in the gate was unjust. And the church of Jesus Christ needs to establish, to seek forth the establishment of God’s law as reflected in the civil statutes in the place we live. Otherwise, these gates are just horrific looking, as the decision last week was.

So God says, you know, one of the big things on the list for our work in cities are gates. They’re high places and they’re gates. They’re places of rule, power, legal development.

Oh, it doesn’t stop there. One last thing before I move on here: Jeremiah 29. Again, we’re real happy that a lot of people are talking about Jeremiah 29 and seeking the peace of the city and praying for the peace of the city because “in their peace, we’ll have peace.” What do we do? And we’re in the midst of a non-Christian culture. And so we’re real happy that people are trying to get involved in Portland. But you know, it is not seeking the peace of the city when we involve ourselves in “me too” evangelicalism. It doesn’t. The peace of the city is not having peaceable areas where homosexuals can get married. That’s not peace. Peace in the Bible is the presence of God and a culture ordered by his laws.

Okay? It’s not ministering to the city to be quiet about these kind of horrible rulings. And in fact it is absolutely not serving the city correctly. The judge doesn’t help some poor guy struggling, on the basis of the culture in which we live, with homosexual desires. The judge says “Bless you my son” when we evangelicals go into trying to transform Oregon City or Portland and don’t bring a distinctively Christian perspective on environmentalism, sustainability, whatever it is. We’re just “me-too” evangelicals, and we’re not seeking the peace of the city. We’re seeking peace with the city by letting them leave us alone and see us as good guys.

You know, one of the things that Keller talks about in his DVD is, you know, there’s several responses to the position which we find ourselves. One is accommodation, assimilation by them. We lose completely our Christian distinctiveness. The other is accommodation to what they’re doing. We’re Christians, but yeah, it’s fine what you’re doing. You know, I’m okay. You’re okay. That whole thing. Neither of those are acceptable for us. We want to establish God’s law in the gate and with beauty.

So let’s be careful how we look at these things. Seeking the peace of the city, praying for the peace of the city sometimes means—as I mentioned from Rich Bledsoe—it sometimes means learning how to curse your city, okay, like John the Baptist did. John the Baptist was seeking the peace of the city by bringing God’s chastisements to a civil ruler who was engaged in illicit sexual activity that is abhorrent to God. He was seeking the peace of the city. So let’s be careful how we go about doing this. We have a city in which one of the ways we should seek peace—did I don’t know if we had the special offering for the PRC here last week or not, but we were going to have a special offering for him.

One of the ways we seek the peace of the city is by encouraging and giving money to the PRC. We have injustice, bloodshed going on in the context of Portland by means of abortion. Seeking the peace of the city means seeking the end of the murder of pre-born children. Parents should establish gates of justice in our homes, right? Do justice on an individual level. Seek the peace by applying the truths of God at the gate of the city. And of course, the family is one of these places as well, okay.

Next: walls of precious stones. And this talks about protection. Walls are places that seek to protect people. And here we can talk about the other judicial ruling—the illegal immigrant ruling overturning at least portions of the Arizona law. Arizona, at the bottom level, is simply trying to have a wall around their state. Now, it’s not a wall they’re going to keep out anybody they don’t like. It’s a wall that they’re keeping out people that the American government, in connection with the states, has said we want certain kinds of people and certain numbers of them coming through these walls. The walls are permeable, but they’re walls nonetheless.

And all the Arizona statute tries to do is maintain a wall and safety for the people of Arizona. Now, walls are to protect people, protect cultures. They’re good. But walls particularly protect people that are vulnerable. And God wants us to have a view to protecting the widow, the stranger, right, the fatherless. And so the other side of this—the other ditch to fall in terms of the Arizona matter—is to really have xenophobia, hatred of strangers, fear of strangers, and not want to encourage and protect people in our country who are here legally who don’t know the language, who don’t have skills, whatever it might be.

Our heart—the heart of the church—should be to have walls of safety around those who are particularly vulnerable. If you don’t know the language, that can make you particularly vulnerable. So we have that. But walls are also matters of safety for the culture, and we should seek to have those kind of walls where we’re at.

So the third area we should seek: spiritual high places for our city in Oregon City. We should be involved in the gates. We should be involved in the walls of Oregon City, and we should be involved in trying to protect people that have particular difficulties in what they’re doing—single moms, as an example, right? They’re vulnerable, and we should have a desire to protect them.

And what we should do is say, “Well, the walls of Oregon City right now don’t really help them. We put them on state programs. We create entitlements for people that are vulnerable. And all we do is increase their dependence on the state. And we hold up the high shield of the civil state, statism. And we tell people it’s a right for them rather than the grace of God working toward them. That doesn’t help them. What we want to do in Oregon City is replace those kind of walls of protection with Love, Inc. And what the church is really gearing up—and helping the vulnerable of the city, those that need help in a way that’s godly.

Now, some of them aren’t going to like that. They don’t, you know, it’s it’s better to think you’re entitled to help than to have grace. But it’s really good for each and every one of us to realize that we’re the recipients of God’s grace. And our walls should demonstrate that as well. God is building this, right? He’ll lay these things. And we want people that are protected to know that it’s God who’s protecting them. And he’s doing it graciously.

So these walls are another element—a place of safety for the vulnerable. And so the precious stones here are really stones of fire, fiery stones.

So there’s an agenda for the city that’s an agenda for city transformation: high points, places of spiritual quest; places of safety or protection, walls; places of jurisprudence and development; and then all of these things are set in a context of beauty and cultural development. There are all these beautiful stones attached to them, and we build then in beauty. We have cultural development that we should seek for Oregon City, Portland, wherever city you live in. And that helps to focus the attention of the church here in Oregon City, for instance, on particular things that we can then begin to work on. And work we must, right?

Solzhenitsyn, writing of what happened in the Soviet Union, he said that everyone waited bewitched for something to happen of its own accord, but that something never happened. You know, so we’re looking at a situation in which, in each of these areas, we’re losing ground, not gaining ground culturally, nationally, whatever it is. And it’s not going to turn around unless we do something about it. If we sit around bewitched, waiting for the thing to happen—if we believe that history is kind of a cycle, and oh, it’s swinging left, but then it’ll swing back right and oh, yeah, we know we’re losing liberties now, but we know they’ll come back. Ah, that experiment’s been tried in communist Russia and failed.

God says, you have to do something. You have to, some extent at least, be praying for and then, as directed by the church and by your own conscience, to engage somewhat in these social, public policy issues to affect this kind of change. Otherwise, we end up with a city that is not safe for us, increasingly not safe, that is not just, and that is seeking the high places of a counterfeit religion. And the end result will be ugliness rather than beauty.

All of this stuff is set in the context of these beautiful stones. You know, these stones are mentioned in the scriptures in several places. And they’re sort of like, you know, on the breastplate of the high priest. In Ezekiel, it talks about the king of Tyre—and some people think that’s Satan, some people think it’s Adam, some people think it’s the high priest because the high priest has these stones on him—and that king of Tyre is set in these beautiful stones. But then these stones reflect the beauty of God’s glory.

And God’s word talks about the beauty of God’s glory in the rainbow in heaven, okay? We always think about the rainbow—God sets it up there to protect us from flood. Yeah. But the Bible, in Ezekiel and Revelation, when men see the throne of God, they see a rainbow around the throne of God. And then in the book of Revelation, Jesus is described as wearing a rainbow. Okay? Over his head—it says, in some translations, it means around his head—there’s a rainbow. You know, Jesus kind of has this rainbow power cap around him, and he’s looking at you through the rainbow through his reflected glory. And that glory now is set in protection of you and the earth. It’s the promise that he won’t destroy the earth again.

And when we see a city clothed in this kind of beauty—the fire stones, the stones of fire—what it means is a city clothed in the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. It is really the place of his dwelling. And our cities are to be preeminently and primarily a place of the dwelling place of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s the one then that establishes high places, gates, and walls in beauty for us.

Finally, this temple reality is described as children. And we don’t want to talk about it today. I really wanted to lay out a strategy for the city. But notice that the vision goes on to talk about how “all your children shall be taught by the Lord” and “great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness, you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.”

So you’ll be protected from external enemies, and you’ll also be protected from internal tyranny as well. That’s what those two words mean at the end. And the end result of such a city is a place where we can have our children taught of the Lord. And finally, then, the last agenda for Oregon City and for Portland is to have educational establishments both in our homes and supported by the churches where children can learn from the Lord.

Ultimately, we’re the jewels, right? We’re on the high priest’s chest. We’re close to the heart of God. We are reflections of the glory of God. We are gemstones. And God is in the process of polishing us by means of his word. And the end result of that is the establishment of a people. You move from being afflicted and storm-tossed and not comforted to now having protection from internal enemies and external enemies and a place of peace and prosperity where children are taught of the Lord.

That’s the vision. That’s the dream for the city that hopefully changes us a little bit today and transforms us to seek those elements of God’s beautiful city here in this city and in the cities where we live.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for coming into your throne room. We thank you for the beauty of your word. We thank you for this vision of a beautified city in these particular elements. Bless us, Lord God, by the power of your Holy Spirit to meditate upon walls, to meditate upon high places, to meditate upon gates, and to meditate upon the beauty in which each of these things are set in your holy city. Bless us, Father, as we seek to reflect this truth, this beautiful vision of your glory in heaven in our lives individually, in our families, and in our city. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.